Originally posted by MSV MD 2B
wisdom?!!! wisdom is realizing that everyone has to do different things to a) get the inofrmation in their head and b) get what they want so while i might wnat aoa or something better than a pass or even just better than 70 that might not be what the next person wants. the 2 hour tip was a recomendation that someone gave who has had experience in the field. does it work for me- sometimes yes and sometimes no and for someone having problems that come from the fact that they don't study enough it mgiht be a good rule of thumb. it seme ed liek you were womdering if you studied enough from your first post.
so you call yourself of average intelligence well maybe maybe so or maybe your methdo is just so good for you thta it just works relaly well for you. mroe power to you. most fo my classmates that i talked to in teh time since you first worte this post though do study more than 2 hours a day on average. if you want to strive for mediocrity, then go right ahead.
anyway you defended your study method really well so if you are so comfortable with it, why did you even post your original post?
it seems to me that you are doing a greta job too of supporting others who want to justify their complacency with mediocrity too judging from the praise you received. and it is always funny to me how people call books that mgiht be helpful to som just becuase they are antithetical to their practices.
i have a child and a husband also and while i have to basically do what i can as far as studying is concerned, i know that for ME it has to be mroe than 2 hours a day.
anywya that was a nice segueway into the end of my study break...
Har Har. I am not "striving for mediocrity." In fact, I am not striving at all. I have achieved mediocrity with a minimal expenditure of effort.
On the other hand, I scored slightly above the national average on Step 1 so there must be at least 10,000 or so other meidcal students in the country who are also mediocre.
On another note, while I am not complaining about having a wife, three kids, and five dogs, and I wouldn't trade them for anything in the world, let's be realistic and admit that some of us with families just can not devote as much time to studying as you single people.
We family people have logistical functions that eat into our free time.
Just getting my family into the mini-van, for example, takes about five minutes. There's the car-seat thing, the disposition of car toys, and the scramble to make sure that we have diapers, wipes and spare outfits for the baby. And this is just one small chore. Then we have bath time, tooth-brushing, story time, supervising their homework, family outings, grocery shopping, house cleaning, cooking, and an endless list of little jobs that come with owning a house and being a responsible adult.
Speaking for myself, I would go insane if on top of all this I had to study for six hours a day after class. Oh, I also like to get at least seven hours of sleep a night and I like to run at least five times a week.
Pardon my weakness and lack of dedication to the cult of medical school.
Generally I would rather take my children to the park then sit in the library and meomrize some useless trivia which I will invariably forget after the test.
And you will forget. Quick closed book quiz: How many of you third or fourth years remember the steps in the coagulation pathway? It is useless to memorize things like this because you can quickly find it in most reference books if you need to know and really, only a general knowledge of it is important for most patient encounters.
Not to be nihilistic but there is so much medical knowledge out there that in the great scheme of things, even if you know three times as many facts as I do you still know next to nothing. This is why understanding the concepts is more important then memorizing facts, why studying for understanding takes less time then memorizing, and why I can pass tests with two hours a day of study while some of you apparently study until your eyes bleed.
Some of the biggest "memorizers" in my class failed Step 1.
As for applying to residencies, I am resigned to the fact that I will probably not go into dermatology. I bet I'll match in the field in which I am interested. I'm average man, you see. I surf on the crest of the bell curve. On the average, most people get at least there first, second or third ranked program.
